Maths and Theoretical Physics Course Thread TR031 TR035

Maybe_Memories

Aoibheann wrote: »

I'd probably die laughing if he completely changed the paper this year.. :pac: Although, seeing as a huge portion of your class would likely fail if that were to happen, I guess it's not that likely. Remember though, papers for this year (end of year as opposed to schols I mean) haven't been set yet, so don't count your chickens etc!

I'm very much relying on Simms asking the usual questions on the schol exam. :pac: Just vomit up the answers to the four Geometry questions, then some stuff on the residue theorem, some stuff about holomorphic functions and do a few integrals (c'mon Derek!!)
Be grand. :pac:

asdfghjz

While Frolov asks the same questions every year, there doesn't seem to be any pdf knocking about with all the questions worked out?

Bottleopener

Burkie.EXE wrote: »

Don't feel too bad for them. They still have Donal next semester.

Pete > Donal.

Although Donal is the man.

PurpleFistMixer

Guys, the set of lecturers is not well-ordered.

Phil92

1st Year TP here, and I'm havily considering switching to Maths.
Basically, I'm sick to my teeth of labs and Waves Lectures, and I'd quite like to go on Eramus.
Since it looks like 3rd/4th year Maths people can still do quantum mechanics and stuff like that, I don't see much point in staying.

Any advice?

asdfghjz

Phil92 wrote: »

1st Year TP here, and I'm havily considering switching to Maths.
Basically, I'm sick to my teeth of labs and Waves Lectures, and I'd quite like to go on Eramus.
Since it looks like 3rd/4th year Maths people can still do quantum mechanics and stuff like that, I don't see much point in staying.

Any advice?

If you don't enjoy labs/physics lectures then I would say no, there is no point in staying. All the theoretical physics material is taught by the school of maths and is fully available to maths students (except the yang-mills course this year if the maths page is to be believed, but I imagine you could do it if you wanted), along with other modules that would be quite useful to anyone looking to go ahead to postgraduate work in TP.

Maybe_Memories

asdfghjz wrote: »

If you don't enjoy labs/physics lectures then I would say no, there is no point in staying. All the theoretical physics material is taught by the school of maths and is fully available to maths students (except the yang-mills course this year if the maths page is to be believed, but I imagine you could do it if you wanted), along with other modules that would be quite useful to anyone looking to go ahead to postgraduate work in TP.

Why can't we do yang-millis? The only pre-requisites are either differential geometry or QFT.

Aoibheann

You can now do Yang-Mills as an SS Maths student, see the Hilary term selection of modules here. I know a few of the final year Maths students did ask, and they're definitely taking the module next term. Possibly an error initially, I'm not sure.

ride-the-spiral

Although I'm only a first year TP i'd like to stick with it. Waves will be finished this week, and If special relativity is anything to go by then I think that the physics will pick up when they stop catering to people who haven't done LC physics. I know labs are awfully tedious and boring, but in 3rd year we have 28 hrs of labs for the year (Compared to 66 at the moment) but that is a while away.

For me anyway, looking at the 3rd and 4th year maths modules, the ones which interest me most are the ones which TP's do, and the physics modules still look interesting too.

However I'm just a first year, and am probably a tad naive. Obviously the experiences of the people who did or didn't switch should have more weight on your decision but I thought it would be helpful to represent the side of people in the class who like both parts of the course.

PurpleFistMixer

Phil92 wrote: »

1st Year TP here, and I'm havily considering switching to Maths.
Basically, I'm sick to my teeth of labs and Waves Lectures, and I'd quite like to go on Eramus.
Since it looks like 3rd/4th year Maths people can still do quantum mechanics and stuff like that, I don't see much point in staying.

Any advice?

You can do TP courses in the maths department, but if you switch you will definitely be a mathematical theoretical physicist (at least for the rest of your undergrad). Your focus will be different (ie you won't do spectroscopy/solid state physics, the like) which could be what you want. It's quite difficult to advise really because ultimately it just depends on what you want to get out of the degree. TP has more of a physics focus to TP, maths has more of a maths focus to TP. Probably in the end which one you do isn't going to massively affect your career choices etc. (unless you're applying for something which demands labs experience or somesuch), so pick whatever you're going to enjoy more and find more interesting.

Disclaimer: 4th year TP, almost switched to maths in 3rd year.

IllusionedEyes

Hey guys

I'm a JF Engineering student who's thinking of transferring to TP. Naturally, I've arranged a meeting with my tutor to discuss it, but I was just wondering if anyone here could offer any advice! I've tagged along to a handful of TP lectures, including Analysis, Astro, Linear Algebra, Mechanics, Special Rel and Waves and I've found most of them quite interesting - Analysis in particular.

I absolutely adore maths and I've quite an interest in physics too. TP was the course I wanted to do when I was in 5th year, but when 6th year came around I changed my mind every 2 weeks and ended up in Engineering! One of the main things that concerned me about TP is the career opportunities - the tcd website seems quite vague when it comes to that information, would anyone be able to give me a bit more insight?

Also wondering what TP Schols are like. The papers for my current course don't seem too difficult, but when I checked out TP I got a little bit of a shock..

Cheers in advance for any help or advice anyone might be able to offer!

Maybe_Memories

How does one become one of the helproom people?

Fringe

Donal sends an email to JS/SS at the start of the year.

Maybe_Memories

Also since I'll be trying for schols again next year, what are the chances Simms/Frolov retire? :P

Please say very low?

Aoibheann

Simms is technically retired, seeing as he is an Emeritus professor! :P And I can't see Frolov retiring any time soon!

Kwekubo

Maybe_Memories wrote: »

Also since I'll be trying for schols again next year

I don't hear no fat lady singin' yet

Maybe_Memories

Aoibheann wrote: »

Simms is technically retired, seeing as he is an Emeritus professor! :P And I can't see Frolov retiring any time soon!

Well in that case... is it likely that Simms will still be teaching geometry next year?

Kwekubo wrote: »

I don't hear no fat lady singin' yet

This made me think of Independence Day. :cool:

PurpleFistMixer

Maybe_Memories wrote: »

How does one become one of the helproom people?

I would recommend pre-emptively emailing Donal about it. That's what I did, anyway, afair...

Maybe_Memories

Simms has his own wiki page! Deadly!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Simms

Aoibheann

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

I would recommend pre-emptively emailing Donal about it. That's what I did, anyway, afair...

That's a good suggestion - I'm pretty sure it's first-come, first-served when he sends the general email out to JS and SS students. I was lucky enough to be online when it was sent last year, so I fired off a reply within about five minutes and thankfully got it!

Fringe

Yeah, do that. I applied fairly late and was rejected.

Maybe_Memories

Trying to set up a maths homepage. The mkhyplan command I'm supposedly supposed to use doesn't work. Advice?

PurpleFistMixer

Maybe_Memories wrote: »

Trying to set up a maths homepage. The mkhyplan command I'm supposedly supposed to use doesn't work. Advice?

scp into your maths account, put HTML files in the www folder, sorted.

dabh

Maybe_Memories wrote: »

Trying to set up a maths homepage. The mkhyplan command I'm supposedly supposed to use doesn't work. Advice?

If not sorted in accordance with PFM's comment, check out UNIX file permissions. The www folder (or directory) needs to be general readable. Also the specific HTML files.

Specifically, presuming you have www as a subdirectory of your home directory, then

ls -ld www

in your home directory should tell you the permissions of the www directory. To make it readable by others besides yourself, try

chmod o+rx www

when you are in your home directory.

Then

cd www

and

chmod o+r myfile.html

where myfile.html is the file you want to make available on the Web.

Maybe_Memories

Right, let me get this right. (Sorry if I'm wrong! :P )
Make the www folder, drop the html files into it, make them readable. Basically?

dabh

Maybe_Memories wrote: »

Right, let me get this right. (Sorry if I'm wrong! :P )
Make the www folder, drop the html files into it, make them readable. Basically?

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/local/admin/faq.html#wwwhome

Mr. Maths

Anyone know when they announce who got the physics entrance scholarships?

Aoibheann

The School of Physics scholarships tend to take quite a while.. I was officially told in March of first year that I'd be getting it, so it could be a while yet. I know that at the time the best person to ask was the school administrator, so I'd imagine that popping into the office in the SNIAM wouldn't be a bad idea.

ride-the-spiral

So how's this Advanced Calculus mid term test? I doubt it will be too hard but I'm a bit apprehensive as it's our first actual college test.

Maybe_Memories

Anyone know anywhere with some good Algebraic Geometry notes? Unfortunately a certain lecturer's writing is illegible.

Not helped by not understanding algebraic geometry either. Should've done number theory. :pac: